Eliud Kipchoge tried to break two hours in his last marathon. He’ll try to lower the world record at his next one.
The Kenyan Olympic champion entered the Berlin Marathon on Sept. 24, four and a half months after running 2:00:25 at Nike’s sub-two-hour marathon event in Monza, Italy.
“I was very close to breaking the two-hour barrier in Monza,” Kipchoge said in a press release Thursday. “Now I believe the BMW Berlin Marathon is the perfect venue for attacking the official world record”
Berlin, with its pancake-flat roads, was the site of the last six times the men’s 26.2-mile world record was lowered in the last 14 years, coming down from 2:05:38 to the current mark of 2:02:57.
Kipchoge, 32, won his last Berlin start in 2015, clocking 2:04:00 with his insoles infamously slipping out the back of his shoes and flopping the last half of the race. He also finished runner-up to Wilson Kipsang in 2013.
Kipchoge is believed to be primed to break the 2:02:57 world record that countryman Dennis Kimetto ran in Berlin in 2014.
On May 6, Kipchoge ran 2:00:25 in Nike’s staged sub-two-hour marathon attempt on a Formula One race track. It was contested under special conditions that made it ineligible for record purposes with pacers entering mid-race.
Before that, Kipchoge won five straight major marathons, including the Rio Olympics in 2:08:44 in conditions not suitable for a fast time. He won the Olympic marathon by 70 seconds, the largest margin of victory since Frank Shorter won in 1972.
The other marquee fall marathon -- New York City -- is a more difficult course and not suited for world-record chasing.
Kipchoge withdrew from selection for Kenya’s team for the world championships in London in August.
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